Friday, February 09, 2007

Qwest, Level 3 drop; Windstream gains

Nothing changes in telecom. The Fool reports that Qwest delivered its fourth straight quarter of profit, but its fourth-quarter operating margin declined slightly from the third quarter. Qwest's 4Q profit was $194M; it added 165k BB subs. Qwest reduced debt by $1b to $13.4B [Phone+]

L3 financial highlights (according to Yahoo Biz) are as follows:

  • Consolidated Revenue of $846 million, but expect $1B /Q going forward;
  • Net Loss of $237 million;
  • Consolidated Adjusted OIBDA of $189 million (<--- ????)
  • Consolidated Free Cash Flow of negative $29 million
  • Laying off at least 1000 in 2007 [according to trading markets]

Meanwhile, Arkansas Business reports that Windstream Corp. of Little Rock (Alltel-Valor Wireline) had strong BB subscriber growth leading to a 39 percent gain in fourth-quarter net income on profits of $117.7 million. Windstream did add 53k BB subs during the Q (total now at 656,000). And an interest stat is that ARPC is $79.72, an increase of 6 percent from a year ago. But th ereal reason for the profit was probably:

Also during the quarter, Windstream agreed to sale its directory publishing business, Windstream Yellow Pages, to affiliates of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a private equity investment firm, for $525 million. [Arkansas Biz]

BTW, the breakdown of ELN numbers in easy to scare you charts is here.

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